Live Activities and the Dynamic Island were introduced with iOS 16 and the iPhone 14 Pro, respectively. Over the past two years, Apple and other developers have been making really good use of those new features, especially with the 2024 Presidential Election yesterday. Now that the latest beta of iOS 18.2 has been pushed out for developers, it looks like Apple has a new feature up its sleeves.
In case you haven’t known this already, Safari on iOS has been capable of downloading files online. Starting with iOS 18.2, as spotted by Rishi Agrawal on X, Apple is adding another new Live Activity for keeping track of Safari file downloads, this will be especially useful to keep track of the download progress directly through either the Dynamic Island or on the Lock Screen, especially when you’re multitasking with those downloads in the background. Of course, once the files finish downloading, they will be saved in a local Downloads folder on your iPhone, and users can even move those files to iCloud Drive, so they can access them across several Apple devices.
#Safari now has #LiveActivities for downloading files from the Internet! No more opening Safari repeatedly to check your downloads. pic.twitter.com/iHKcP16QMJ
— Rishi Agrawal (@singhalrishi27) November 6, 2024
Apple is also working on having the Vehicle Motion Cues make use of the Dynamic Island, rather than a large pop-up. Signs are pointing towards the first week of December for the public release of iOS 18.2, along with the next set of Apple Intelligence features.
